Coal lobbyists hope to slow pace of cap-and-trade as Senate starts hearings on climate bill

As a Senate committee begins hearings today on the massive bill written to slow and mitigate climate change, some in the coal industry see it as a life-or-death battle, reports Anne Mulkern of Greenwire for The New York Times: "Although the House bill includes some help for coal, it also creates incentives for utilities to move away from polluting fuels. Industry advocates and independent analysts say that leaves coal with few options for a sustainable future." The story explains the basics of how the bill would affect coal: initially helpful, but in the long term discouraging its use, and perhaps catching it in a squeeze where technology fails to keep pace with markets.

"The industry's hope is that it can find a commercially viable way to capture carbon emissions and sequester them underground or underwater," Mulkern writes. "But putting the pieces of that technology together and getting them running before the carbon cap tightens could be difficult. . . . It is through that narrow window that the industry sees a potential valley of death. If utilities switch away from coal, coal-fired plants won't be built, coal production will stop, coal miners will lose their jobs and the ancillary businesses around coal will shut down, said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. Then, even if carbon capture and sequestration comes online, Popovich said, it will be too late."

So, the coal industry is lobbying "to slow down the pace of any cap-and-trade system," Mulkern reports. "The House bill would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030, and 83 percent by 2050. Coal advocates are not revealing what numbers they are willing to accept, only that the ones in the House bill are unrealistic for the industry." But environmental lobbyists say the timetable has been weakened too much already, and alternative energy sources eventually can fill in the gap if they get enough government incentives, Nick Berning of Friends of the Earth told Mulkern. "And energy efficiency alone can make a big cut in greenhouse gas emissions. But it could be tough to win that argument in the Senate, he said, where coal potentially has a strong influence." Berning told her, "Ultimately, the way Congress operates is, unless the public gets really interested in an issue, special interests get what they want."

For an advance look at the Senate hearings, from Darrell Samuelsohn of Greenwire, click here. For excerpts of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's testimony about the role of rural America in combating climate change, click here.